


telephone

by robin_hoods



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Banter, Did They or Did They Not?, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 02:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11773191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robin_hoods/pseuds/robin_hoods
Summary: “Exactly!” Lance said. “You know, this whole situation could’ve been avoided if Keith and Shiro had just come out and said, ‘Guys, sometimes we make out with each other. Hope that’s okay’. I mean, it saves us the trouble of having to walk in on you and finding out the hard way.”





	telephone

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this sometime last year after watching season 1, so that's about the time when it's set.
> 
> Also, there are no telephones in this fic. It's just a reference to the telephone game. ;)

The moment Keith stepped into the common area of the ship, he knew something was up. Hunk was innocently whistling – before Pidge cleared her throat, loudly, and he shut up. Everyone had a hard time _not_ looking at him. He walked over to the couch with long strides, and Hunk went back to whistling as soon as he noticed that Keith had noticed he’d been watching him from the corner of his eye.

If Pidge thought she was being inconspicuous by looking at him right over the rim of her glasses from behind her laptop, she had another thing or two to learn about subtlety. And there was Allura, who was in deep conversation with Coran, who both were positioned in such a way that she and Coran could turn their heads just the slightest to look at him.

And Lance, of course, but Lance didn’t even bother hiding that he was staring at him from his upside down position on the couch.

“ _What_?” he finally ground out, when nobody said anything.

“Oh, nothing,” Lance said, clearly the only one who felt like there was nothing to hide. “Except for that whole making out with Shiro thing in the training room. That’s about it.”

Everyone (including Keith, this time) whipped their heads around to look at Lance, who looked fairly blasé about the whole thing. “We’re cool with that, by the way,” he added.

“What?” he said, again.

“Lance, you’re such a blabbermouth,” Pidge said after a moment, having decided it wasn’t worth it to keep her laptop open.

“Whatever happened to ‘we all promise not to say anything until they’re ready to tell us’,” Hunk complained, and Lance shrugged – not that gravity was all that helpful when trying to shrug upside down.

“I suppose that idea was thrown out of the hatch the moment Lance opened his mouth,” Pidge mumbled, although there was no bite to her statement.

“Says the person who walked in on them,” Lance retorted.

“I did not. I just—I just opened the door, and then they were there, and I turned around before they even saw me!”

“I think that’s the definition of ‘walking in on’.”

“We had this conversation this morning, remember?”

“I certainly don’t,” Keith said, “because I wasn’t there.”

“Yes, we know, too busy kissing the leader’s face off – how was that, by the way?” Lance quickly rolled out of the way, onto the floor, when Pidge threw her shoe at his head.

“I never actually said that they were— you know?” she said, at the same time Allura tried to get them to move onto a different subject. It obviously wasn’t working, as Pidge and Lance bickered back and forth, with Keith in the middle wondering if he’d found himself in a romantic comedy, and nobody had bothered to tell him. He glanced to his right, and Hunk looked just as mystified as he felt.

“Guys, please,” Allura tried, once more, and, well, Keith had to give her credit for at least trying.

“I didn’t kiss Shiro in the training room,” he said, on the off chance it’d make them stop arguing about – for god’s sake – his love life. Was nothing sacred on this ship? “Pidge, what did you even see?” Because whatever it was, it couldn’t have been much if he and Shiro hadn’t even noticed the door opening and closing.

“Just you and Shiro, in a—compromising position,” she said diplomatically, although he could see her turn slightly red under the collar of her shirt.

“That’s what you told me, yes,” Allura said, and Keith raised his eyebrows. Since when were Pidge and Allura all buddy-buddy with each other?

“And I happened to overhear their conversation,” Hunk piped up, glanced at Keith, and then said “Sorry,” as if he’d been the one to walk in on them in the first place.

“Ah, yes, I remember that part,” Coran said, inexplicably stroking his moustache for unknown reasons.

“That’s impressive, Coran, seeing as you weren’t present during that particular conversation,” Allura said, looking slightly amused.

“Let’s just say Lance has a nice and colourful way of describing the goings-on of the ship.”

“He wasn’t there either,” Hunk said.

“Yeah, why is that?” Lance said, having crawled up from his position on the floor, leaning his head on his hand with an elbow on the table. “Why am I the last person to find out anything on this ship? Keith! I thought we were buddies!” Lance’s face was so earnest, Keith was caught off guard – at least until his face broke out into a grin. “I mean, I would obviously tell you if I happened to score with a pretty girl.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘brag’, Lance,” Pidge said. “And anyway, you keep getting it wrong.”

“Look, I’m just saying what Hunk told me.”

“Hey! Don’t drag me into this!”

Keith should never have gotten up this morning. Or, better, he should’ve just stuck to the training room and stayed there. The one good thing was that Shiro wasn’t here to be the subject of everyone else’s conversation.

“Pidge,” he said, his patience running thin, “what exactly did you see, when, and where?”

“Well,” she said, “it all started early yesterday morning.”

She’d wanted to check on one of the programs she’d left running in the lab overnight, to see if it had been able to come up with locations with a large number of Galra ships stationed – “I don’t need to hear the math,” Lance interrupted – and on her way there, she’d passed one of the training rooms. To her surprise, it hadn’t been empty. She’d expected to be the only one up this early – living on a space ship messed with her sleep schedule, honestly.

So she thought she’d check. She knew Keith was the one who vigorously used the training area, and she just wanted to be certain that he was—well, she wasn’t entirely certain what she’d wanted to check on, but at the time it had seemed logical. She’d opened the door, expecting to see a spar between human and robot, and instead was confronted with something else.

She knew, logically, that Keith and Shiro were probably right in the middle of practicing when one of them got a leg up over the other. But it didn’t feel like they’d been fighting. The air was thick, but it was not the kind of tension you resolved with violence. Keith was right on top of Shiro, sitting on his stomach, their position strangely intimate. She felt like an intruder, about to step in on a moment she never was supposed to see – and she’d never thanked her reflexes more when she hurriedly pressed the button to close the door again, shutting right when she saw Keith lean closer to Shiro and—

“So you never actually saw anything,” Keith said, and she furiously blushed.

“Uh, did you miss the part where you were about to stick your tongue down Shiro’s throat,” Lance said pointedly.

“God, Lance, I must’ve blacked out and missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. For the third time.”

“I feel like I’m in a soap opera,” Hunk said, “any moment now, Shiro’s going to walk in and tell us that, actually, he’s Coran’s father.” Everyone paused to look at him. “What? It was the first thing I could think of.”

Keith shook his head, and refocused his attention on Pidge. “Then what?”

“Well, I—I was a little distracted, but I did end up in the lab eventually, before Hunk dragged me off to breakfast after several hours.”

Oh, yeah, she’d been very distracted. Pidge was the type of person who could focus so well she barely heard anything going on around her, but to her dismay that hadn’t been the case yesterday morning. Trying not to look either Keith or Shiro in the eye had been particularly hard, because she’d been absolutely certain she’d turn the same shade of red as Keith’s lion. On the other hand, she’d tried rationalizing that maybe she’d been mistaken, maybe she’d just been too tired, or maybe they just hadn’t been about to—about to. Uh. Well, yeah.

“Kiss,” Hunk helpfully supplied, and she wanted to sink into the floor.

“The thing is,” she said, “several people asked me whether anything was wrong. First Hunk, then Shiro, then Coran, and then – when _he_ thought it was a… a woman thing, he asked Allura.”

Pidge had wanted to keep her mouth shut, she really had – catching her teammates in an intimate position like that early in the morning in a room where usually nobody bothered going obviously meant they weren’t looking for people to find out what they were doing. (Although, in her honest opinion, if they had been horsing around, they should’ve been a little more careful about it. They could’ve locked the door!)

She hadn’t been entirely sure how to bring it up with Allura, or if she should, because even though they were the only two women on board, their interests didn’t exactly align. So when she’d asked, ‘Do you think it’s possible for paladins forming Voltron to… form a connection with one another that’s stronger than any other bond they’ve ever had?’ Allura’s eyes had lit up and she’d started talking about paladin bonding experiences (did they do Altean trust falls?), and how forming Voltron often created connections between people they hadn’t know existed (okay), and she’d begun to wonder out loud if Pidge had started experiencing the telepathic bond yet (WHAT?).

“Is that why I get these weird pop tunes stuck in my head all the time?” Lance said. “I mean, I like to jam out, but not at 3 in the morning, thanks.”

“What’s a pop tune?” Coran asked, and Pidge quickly said, “Nothing important!” before Lance would start crooning some kind of song that had been in the top 50 when they’d left the planet.

“So, I tried explaining that wasn’t entirely what I’d meant,” Pidge continued – and that had been one of the most awkward moments of her life, especially when Allura assumed she was talking about herself. ‘Two other paladins,’ she’d elaborated, ‘both of whom are not me.’

It had taken at least another half hour before she’d been willing to admit who she was actually talking about. That exact moment, Hunk had decided to wander into the kitchen for a snack, catching just the latter half of their conversation.

‘Wait,’ he’d said, ‘Keith was making out with who?’

‘Shiro,’ she’d said. ‘Well, he wasn’t, literally. I’m not sure, actually.’

“I don’t remember saying that,” Hunk said.

“I’m paraphrasing!” Pidge exclaimed.

From there, it had escalated, because trying to hide something from Lance was akin to trying to keep Hunk out of a kitchen. Virtually impossible.

“You could’ve tried harder,” Pidge said, pulling her laptop open again, evidently having decided she was completely done with this conversation.

“No,” Hunk said, “no, I could not. Besides, isn’t it wrong to hide things from your teammates?”

“Exactly!” Lance said, sitting up again. “You know, this whole situation could’ve been avoided if Keith and Shiro had just come out and said, ‘Guys, sometimes we make out with each other. Hope that’s okay’. I mean, it saves us the trouble of having to walk in on you and finding out the hard way.”

“For the last time, Shiro and I were _not_ making out in the training room. Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said in the past ten minutes?”

“I didn’t want to bring this up earlier,” Pidge quickly intervened, “because I thought it’d be a horrible invasion of privacy, and even if I was wrong and you and Shiro did—well, you know—I didn’t want to use it to prove myself right and Lance wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Keith slowly said. “Invade our privacy how?”

“Some of the communal areas – the lounge, the kitchen, and the training areas especially – have cameras installed as a precaution.”

“The training areas aren’t communal, though,” Keith said.

“Well, the theory was that paladins could review the footage of their training sessions,” Allura explained, “most of them didn’t, but some liked to see where they made mistakes, and how they could improve themselves. The hologram actually has a specific program on it to help point this out. We hadn’t quite gotten around to making sure everything works, however, since we’ve been so busy.”

“So… the only thing we’d have to do is watch the footage, and then…” Hunk slowly said. “I mean, what comes after that? Does it make a difference?”

“It shouldn’t,” Pidge said. “Would you mind, Keith?” He shook his head. It wasn’t like anything would come of it. The others tried to hide their curiosity when she found the footage from yesterday, but couldn’t stop themselves from leaning forward when she started playing it. Keith rolled his eyes.

“Okay,” Lance said, “you can see the door opening – that must be you, Pidge – because they’re on the floor, so now they’re—oh.” He tilted his head, and then glanced up at Keith. “Your faces were this close together! Why _didn’t_ you kiss him!”

“First you were certain I kissed him, and now you want to know why I didn’t?” It was a goddamn miracle he hadn’t lost his patience yet. “Make up your mind.”

“I am making up my mind,” Lance replied, “because obviously I think there should have been more kissing.” He glanced back at the screen, and Pidge hurriedly shut it as soon as she noticed everyone had kept staring at it, rather transfixed.

“That was a good move, though,” Allura thoughtfully said. “Stepping sideways at the last moment so you could gain the upper hand, and then using your leg to trip him.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Shiro taught me that, actually. Back at the garrison, more than a year ago. It’s all in the arms.”

“You could’ve been making out _this whole time_ and you haven’t?” Lance asked, sounding horrified.

“Cadets weren’t allowed to have relationships like that with each other,” he slowly said.

“Yeah, like you were such a stickler for the rules.” Lance snorted.

“What I want to know is, is all this unresolved sexual tension going to mess with forming Voltron?” Hunk said.

“It shouldn’t,” Allura informed them, “although I suppose it would be helpful for your team dynamics if Keith and Shiro talked about their feelings.”

Keith seriously considered just getting up, getting into his lion and flying into space, never to return. In fact, the only reason for him to come back was if they promised to never bring this up ever again. Ever.

“No,” he said. “No, we’re not. First of all, has this ever affected forming Voltron? No, it hasn’t, so don’t bring it up again. Secondly, whatever Shiro and I do or don’t do, it’s really none of your business. And now I’m going to eat dinner. Bullshit makes you hungry.”

“Dinner? Sounds like a great plan,” Shiro, who’d just entered the lounge, said.

“Talk about timing,” Hunk said, and Shiro raised his eyebrows, finally noting the awkward silence that had begun just after Keith had gotten up.

“No, this is great,” Lance said, his face the embodiment of eagerness.

“ _No_ ,” Keith said, and if he’d walked any angrier towards the door – where Shiro was still standing – he might as well have been stomping his feet. Shiro still looked horribly confused, but to his credit, he had just missed the entire conversation, and thus had no idea exactly what had just transpired between the other paladins.

Keith actually considered his actions for a second, because although he knew Shiro would just go along with him, they’d never actually talked about being more open about their relationship. Maybe they should’ve, he thought, but that realization wasn’t going to make much of a difference now. So when he stepped into Shiro’s personal space – something he’d done hundreds if not thousands of times – it didn’t take long for Shiro to take the hint.

This was also possibly because Keith had grabbed his collar and pulled him towards himself, for a short surprise kiss. After that, he simply let go and stomped off. “Did I miss something?” Shiro said after a moment. Everyone was staring at him.

“I didn’t think he was actually gonna do it,” Lance said after a moment.

“Well, I suppose I’m glad everyone knows, now,” Shiro said, the smile resting on his face slightly apprehensive. “I did tell him someone would find out eventually…”

“Wait, does that mean you guys have kissed before?!” Hunk said.

It wasn’t easy to embarrass Shiro, but it seemed Hunk had done it now, as Shiro blushed. “Well, yeah?”

“Does that include in the training room?” Lance slyly asked.

“No. Not yet. Why?”

The remaining people in the room shared a glance. “No reason,” Pidge said. She tried hard not to smile.

 


End file.
